Ancient World Review

What To Do With Notre Dame?

"Modernists, after all, have done far more damage in the long run to the urban fabric of Europe than even the Second World War did; and it stands to reason that they, the modernists, would not want anything to escape their attentions for long, lest anything remain intact to shame by painful comparison their own wretched efforts." Source: TakiMag.

Related: Keep the modernists away from the Notre Dame restoration.

Exorcism Goes Mainstream

EWTN Global Catholic Television (2016).

"Exorcism is going multi-denominational. Where once those competing for the souls of followers would burn each other as heretics and engage in bloody wars, the world’s mainstream Christian denominations are now rallying together to battle a resurrected threat." Source: Perth Now.

"And that’s no less than Satan himself.

"The Roman Catholic Church has for the first time opened up its annual exorcism class in Rome to representatives of all major Christian faiths. The Pontifical University of Regina Apostolorum is a Vatican-affiliated university in Rome that has been conducting the increasingly popular annual exorcism conventions for Catholic priests for the past 14 years."

Video from 2010.

Note: Exorcism or similar beliefs and practices go way back:

"The use of protective means against the real, or supposed, molestations of evil spirits naturally follows from the belief in their existence, and is, and has been always, a feature of ethnic religions, savage and civilized. In this connection only two of the religions of antiquity, the Egyptian and Babylonian, call for notice; but it is no easy task, even in the case of these two, to isolate what bears strictly on our subject, from the mass of mere magic in which it is embedded. The Egyptians ascribed certain diseases and various other evils to demons, and believed in the efficacy of magical charms and incantations for banishing or dispelling them. The dead more particularly needed to be well fortified with magic in order to be able to accomplish in safely their perilous journey to the underworld (see Budge, Egyptian Magic, London, 1899). But of exorcism, in the strict sense, there is hardly any trace in the Egyptian records." Source: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.

Exorcism is usually associated with the Catholic Church and backwoods fundamentalist denominations, but  rituals for casting out demons and other types of spirits have also been used by Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Taoists over the millennia. (Wikipedia) And the practice is still relatively common around the world. For instance, the next video shows a Buddhist Ghost Exorcising Festival which took place in Bejing in 2015.

Despite the fact that magic and religion are supposed to be different things [1], exorcism is undoubtedly a magical ritual since it relies on sacred ceremonies and the recitation of adjurations, etc., to ward off or drive a supernatural entity out of a place or a human body. How is this different in practice from, say, a pagan magic ritual designed to calm a storm or appease the gods and guarantee a safe passage?

"For the storm lasted for three days; and at last the Magians, by using victims [cut up in pieces and offered to the manes] and wizards' spells on the wind, and by sacrificing also to Thetis and the Nereids, did make it to cease on the fourth day." (Herodotus)

[1] "Magic is a category into which have been placed various beliefs and practices considered separate from both religion and science." (Wikipedia)

The fact that exorcism is still practiced by the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations provides more evidence, I think, that Christianity is a polytheistic religion.

Exorcism, by definition, is "the religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person or an area..." (Wikipedia) Polytheism is, by definition, "the worship of or belief in multiple deities," so the question of whether a belief in demons makes you a polytheist boils down to whether you think demons or "spiritual entities" qualify as deities.

The word "deity" has various associations. It can mean a god or goddess, a "supernatural being considered divine or sacred," but it has also been defined as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans ... who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life..." (Wikipedia)

Demons may not be as powerful as God, but they are still supernatural entities with powers greater than those of ordinary humans. They are part of a hierarchy of spiritual beings. It might be more accurate to call them demigods, a term that was originally "used to render the Greek and Roman concepts of semideus and daemon." (Wikipedia) "Demon" comes from "daemon" which was the original meaning of "demigod," and demigods are minor deities.

In some cases, demons are or were actual pagan gods. The demon in the Exorcist, for instance, was Pazuzu, a "character from Assyrian and Babylonian mythology ... considered the king of the demons of the wind, and the son of the god Hanbi..." (Wikipedia) If Jesus, the son of Yahweh, is a deity, then so is the demon Pazuzu, the son of Hanbi.

Modern exorcists believe that there are other supernatural entities active in the world besides God. Some of these entities are demons who were once fallen angels. Others are pagan gods transformed into demons by the church.  This belief in a hierarchy of spiritual beings is fundamentally pagan and polytheistic.

Modern Architects Submit More Idiotic Redesign Suggestions For Notre Dame Cathedral

"An architecture firm has proposed replacing the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral with a swimming pool, as France prepares to launch an international competition to restore the fire-damaged gothic edifice to its former glory." Source: The Guardian.

"After the roof and spire of Notre Dame were damaged in a fire watched worldwide in April, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he was open to a 'contemporary gesture' in rebuilding it 'more beautiful than before', and the prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, called for a new spire 'adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era'".

Translation: Architecture firms trying to land a lucrative contract have submitted various proposals for ways to destroy what's left of Notre Dame Cathedral. The idiotic and hugely unpopular French president has said that he's open to turning this historical landmark into a postmodern monstrosity.

I have to admit that the trollish suggestion about turning the cathedral into a car park made me laugh out loud. Meanwhile, let's hope that the Yellow Vests can drive Macron and his flunkies out of power before they can do to France what these architecture firms want to do to the cathedral. Unfortunately, it looks like the protests are running out of steam:

How Notre Dame Cathedral Might Be "Redesigned And Rebuilt," I.E. Destroyed

"Top French design bureau Vincent Callebaut Architectures has gone viral with its plans to replace the roof of the medieval cathedral with a glass shell filled with solar panels." Source: RT.

"Underneath will be a 'sustainable' farm capable of producing 21 tons of fruit and vegetables each year, to be given out for free to the homeless. Not coincidentally perhaps, this is at least the third eco-garden proposal that has been made public, while the vast majority of the submitted designs for the planned reconstruction feature a glass roof."

Comment: All I can say is that I hope whoever is making the decisions here keeps these modern architects away from the cathedral.

Meanwhile, we haven't heard anything at all about what caused the fire that did so much damage to this fantastic historical monument. According to the last reports I read, investigators were focusing on "short circuits and cigarettes," but that was several weeks ago. The fire seems to have vanished from the news completely, which isn't too surprising, I guess. We live in a time when major disasters come and go as if they never happened.

Is the investigation still in progress? Who knows? If this follows the usual pattern, we'll get some throwaway official announcement a couple months from now and that will be the end of it. We can be sure of one thing, though. If the investigators find evidence that the fire was set deliberately, we'll never hear about it.

Note: "French officials are warning people near Notre Dame Cathedral that lead contamination is high in the closed-off plazas and streets surrounding it." Source: Live Science.

"The reason? Building practices reaching back thousands of years. The medieval structure and its later additions — including the famous spire — contained lead, which fell to the ground during the fire that broke out on April 15.

The Eucharist & Cannibalism

Comment: The Eucharist or Holy Communion is clearly an act of symbolic cannibalism, so it's not too surprising that the Romans, acting on vague reports of Christian rituals, would have accused the new cult of practicing actual cannibalism.

The negative Roman view of the early Christians was partly based on distorted rumors about their practices. For instance, the Christians were accused of incest because they called each other "brother and sister." And the charges of cannibalism were especially repulsive.

The Romans would have associated the stories of how Christians ate the flesh and drank the blood of their god with sieges, barbaric eastern cults and legends from Greek mythology: the Thyestean Feast, for instance, in which Atreus killed Thyestes' sons, cooked them and served them to their unknowing father. The stories aren't the same, of course, but the difference between the Communion and real cannibalism would have been lost on the practical-minded Romans.

In this case, it's hard to blame the Romans because the new religion did practice cannibalism. Symbolic cannibalism. And it still does.

Christians do what they can to obfuscate this strange practice, but it's hard to explain away the real significance of what they're doing. When Christians take communion, they are participating in an act of ritual magic in which the bread and wine are miraculously transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ. If that isn't symbolic cannibalism, I don't know what is.

Ritual cannibalism, whether it's symbolic or real, is designed to produce a spiritual transformation. For example, warrior societies often believed -- and some still believe -- that they could absorb the power of their enemies by eating them. In the same way, the follower of a god could literally absorb the spirit and power of the god through an act of sacred cannibalism.

The Communion, a ritual with ancient pagan roots, is surrounded by a fog of mystery and mystical jargon designed to obscure its real meaning, and some theologians, in typical fashion, defend it by claiming that it simply can't be understood. According to New Advent, for instance, "the Church honors the Eucharist as one of her most exalted mysteries, since for sublimity and incomprehensibility it yields in nothing to the allied mysteries of the Trinity and incarnation." [Emphasis added]

In other words, Christianity is a mystery religion.

The connection between the Eucharist and cannibalism is so clear that theologians are compelled to try to explain it away using doubletalk, hairsplitting and paradox to deny the obvious:

"If Catholics believe the Eucharist really is the body and blood of Christ, then they believe they are eating human flesh and drinking human blood," according to The Catholic Thing (2011). "But while holy Communion does involve eating human flesh and blood, it is not true that it is cannibalistic." 

In other words, cannibalism is not cannibalism, which, by definition, is the eating of human flesh by another human being.

The article goes on to make several arguments against the idea that the Communion is actually a form of ritual or symbolic cannibalism,  but none of them are very convincing. For instance, cannibals supposedly only eat the dead, but "the Eucharist is life." Therefore, the Communion can't be cannibalistic. Likewise, "the Eucharist is the whole body and blood of Jesus Christ [but] cannibals only take part of their victims." Apparently, you're not a cannibal if you eat the living and clean your plate.

Most of the arguments here are based on mysticism. For example, the Communion isn't cannibalistic because "when a Catholic receives the Eucharist, he is receiving not just flesh but glorified flesh, a resurrected and transfigured 'super body' that foreshadows the new reality of a new Heaven and a new earth." I'm not sure that this is much of an argument, though. It makes it sound like the Eucharist isn't just cannibalism, but the glorified cannibalism of a super-body with transcendental powers.

I could go on with this, but why bother? Eating human flesh and drinking human blood is obviously cannibalistic even if the flesh and blood are purely symbolic. The truth is that the Eucharist is an act of theophagy -- "feeding on a god" -- with roots in very ancient, pre-Christian fertility rituals. Theophagy is "the act of eating one's god, either literally or symbolically," according to the Free Dictionary. And millions of Christians eat their god on a regular basis around the world.

It's not surprising to find a ritual like this at the very heart of a religion which originated as a mystery cult in Hellenized Israel.

The Trinity Is Pagan

Comment: I don't believe in God myself, so the nature of the god I don't believe in has always been more or less irrelevant. Now that I think about it, though, this three-faced Christian deity seems to be completely pagan.

The Christian god has three aspects or personalities, just like the pagan gods had different manifestations. Take Zeus, for instance. Zeus Olympios was the king of the gods, Zeus Georgos the god of crops and harvests in Athens, Zeus Tallaios a solar deity worshiped in Crete, and so on.

Another example of a polymorphous deity would be the Hindu god Brahma, usually pictured as having four faces signifying different aspects of his underlying nature. (Image: Probably Nurpur, Punjab Hills, Northern India [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.)

As it turns out, the Christian god we're all so familiar with has deeper pagan roots than I would have thought.

The concept of the Trinity as such isn't found in the Bible, apparently, but there are references to "the Father, Son and Holy Ghost." The idea of a three-in-one god was basically invented by the church, which borrowed heavily from pagan philosophy when it came up with the doctrine. According to Wikipedia, "[t]he doctrine of the trinity . . . is not a product of the earliest Christian period, and we do not find it carefully expressed before the end of the second century."

The Trinity doctrine was influenced by Greek metaphysical philosophy and created a split in the early church:

"Such metaphysical thinking was common among the intelligentsia of the Greek world and carried over into the thinking of the Roman world of the New Testament period and succeeding centuries." Source: United Church of God. The so-called "true" church "resisted such infiltration" and "... [t]wo distinct threads of Christianity split and developed separately—one true to the plain and simple teachings of the Bible and the other increasingly compromised with pagan thought and practices adopted from the Greco-Roman world."

Apparently the doctrine of the Trinity wasn't formally accepted until the fourth century when Christianity became the official state religion of what was left of the Roman empire:

"Nontrinitarianism (or antitrinitarianism) refers to Christian belief systems that reject the doctrine of the Trinity as found in the Nicene Creed as not having a scriptural origin. Nontrinitarian views differ widely on the nature of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Various nontrinitarian views, such as Adoptionism, Monarchianism, and Arianism existed prior to the formal definition of the Trinity doctrine in AD 325, 360, and 431, at the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus, respectively. Following the final victory of orthodoxy at Constantinople in 381, Arianism was driven from the Empire, retaining a foothold amongst the Teutonic tribes. When the Franks converted to Catholicism in 496, however, it gradually faded out. Nontrinitarianism was later renewed in the Gnosticism of the Cathars in the 11th through 13th centuries, in the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, and in some groups arising during the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century." (Wikipedia)

It's ironic that some of the so-called heretical Christian movements, at least in this one aspect, were more scripturally "pure" than the official church.

Vaguely related: Duterte calls trinity doctrine "silly."

Gargoyles On Gothic Cathedrals

"In addition to religious figures, many Gothic cathedrals are heavily ornamented with strange, leering creatures. These gargoyles are not merely decorative. Originally, the sculptures were waterspouts to protect the foundation from rain. Since most people in Medieval days could not read, the carvings took on the important role of illustrating lessons from the scriptures." Source: Thought Company.

According to Medievalists.net, "[The word 'gargoyles'] in its most technical [sense] refer[s] to waterspouts projecting from the roof of the Cathedrals. These beasts spray rain from their mouths off of the side of the roof, protecting the stones from water erosion," and would sometimes drench people as they entered the cathedrals. As far as I can tell, the only difference between the gargoyles and grotesques found in Gothic cathedral architecture is that the grotesques didn't serve as waterspouts.

Besides being important for water drainage, the gargoyles (and apparently the grotesques as well) were supposedly meant to scare away demons. In other words, they were a form of Christian superstition and warding-off magic. As a result, some believe that these weird sculptures prove the connection between the Catholic Church and Satanism and other occult practices. Some Christian writers have asked why demons would be frightened off by statues of demons -- a pretty good question, now that I think about it.

Gargoyles are normally associated with Christian cathedrals, but they have deep roots in the pagan world. According to the Washington National Cathedral's website, "Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans all employed animal-shaped waterspouts, but the ancestors of the American gargoyles are thought to date back to the 12th century. St. Bernard once disapprovingly wrote, 'What is the meaning of these unclean monkeys, these savage lions, and monstrous creatures?' Gargoyles caught on anyway."

Related: "The Gargoyles of Chile," Mysterious Universe.

The Menu At Durham Cathedral

Analyzing a "vast amount of food waste" discovered during a dig at the kitchen in Durham Cathedral, archaeologists have recreated the diet of the monks and other people who lived there over the centuries (app. 14th cent - Second World War).

According to The Journal (2014), "fish would have been an important part of the religious order’s diet, and the finds showed that the monks were eating North Sea cod, herring, sole, turbot, and salmon and trout from the River Wear."

Other menu items included "'white meat' calves" and "a wide range of birds" that ranged "from domestic fowl to game and wild birds from the estuaries and moors of the region." The monks may have also eaten puffins and lapwing.

Comment: This menu is necessarily incomplete because things like fruit, vegetables, bread, etc., wouldn't have been preserved after so many years, but it sounds to me like these monks and the other inhabitants of the castle ate better than most people do today. Their food was undoubtedly more healthy than today's diet of sugar-coated lard and processed "meat products" saturated with preservatives, artificial flavoring and other toxic waste.

Note: "Durham Cathedral was built in the late 11th and early 12th centuries to house the relics of St Cuthbert (evangelizer of Northumbria) and the Venerable Bede. It attests to the importance of the early Benedictine monastic community and is the largest and finest example of Norman architecture in England. The innovative audacity of its vaulting foreshadowed Gothic architecture. Behind the cathedral stands the castle, an ancient Norman fortress which was the residence of the prince-bishops of Durham." Source: UNESCO World Heritage List.

Battle Begins Over Notre Dame's Future

"French architects have revealed a stunning set of plans to redesign the Notre Dame Cathedral's fire-ravaged roof as a greenhouse." Source: Daily Mail (April 26, 2019).

"The proposal was shared after French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe proposed 'an international architecture competition' to rebuild the iconic cathedral's spire which was completely destroyed in the fast-spreading blaze on April 15.

"Prime Minister Philippe shared his wish that the cathedral should be 'adapted to issues of our time' and architects Studio NAB have come with the concept of turning the damaged roof into a giant greenhouse as a homage to the importance of nature."

Comment: What an abomination. The Notre Dame cathedral is a historic religious monument and should be restored as faithfully as possible. I have no problem with making changes that would help to preserve the structure from future disasters - using fire-resistant materials, for instance -- but the idea that the building should be "adapted to issues of our time" is a typical example of the way cultural symbols are being hijacked or simply erased in the western world.

We can only hope that there are still some adults in France who will step in and save the cathedral from being transformed into some kind of NeoMarxist atrocity. Postmodern architects, in particular, should be kept well away from the project. They've already caused enough damage as it is.

Were The Vandals The Victims Of Bad Press?

"The name of the Vandals is synonymous today with wanton violence and destruction. But it seems to me that, just like the Vikings, the Vandals have suffered from a bad press. The surviving accounts of their sack of Rome in AD 455, of their further piratical raids around the Mediterranean, and of their persecution of the Catholic inhabitants of North Africa are all presented through the eyes of their enemies and opponents: the Roman and Byzantine Empire and the established Church. Clearly, the Vandals were regarded as the ‘bad guys’ of the day and we too have been led into thinking of them as wild barbarians, intent on the destruction of Rome and its civilization." Source: The British Museum Blog.

Comment: The Vandals weren't exactly choir boys, but as far as I can tell they weren't all that different from everyone else back then. They were looking for land and wanted to form their own kingdoms, just like every other tribe fighting over the remains of the western Roman empire, an empire which was itself originally formed by conquering its neighbors.

The Vandals were a Germanic people or confederation of peoples who may have originated in the Iron Age Przeworsk culture (3rd century BC - 5th century AD) in what is now modern Poland, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). By 200 AD "they were already divided into at least two groups: Hasdings and Silings." According to the OCD, they "seem to have played no major role in the 3rd cent. invasions [of Rome], although contact with the Roman empire was plentiful."

That changed on Dec. 31, 406 AD, when the Vandals crossed the Rhine with two other barbarian tribes, the Alans and Suebi. (OCD) "After three years of widespread devastation in Gaul, they moved over the Pyrenees, and in 411 the invaders divided the Spanish provinces between them." The history here is complex, but the Vandals eventually crossed into Africa, captured Roman Carthage and established their own Vandal kingdom which was eventually conquered by the Byzantines.

The Vandals' methods were brutal and destructive -- they didn't get their name for no reason -- but so were the methods used by the Byzantine Christians and it's easy to forget that the Vandals were Christians themselves: Arian Christians. They persecuted the Catholics in North Africa, but the Catholics persecuted Arianism as well, so I don't see what the church has to complain about.

The Catholic Church makes a big deal about the way their brand of Christianity has been persecuted over the years, but the modern church is at least aware enough to recognize that it can be accused of "inconsistency" in the matter. The church tries to defend its own history -- the Inquisition, religious wars, etc -- by saying that its past intolerance wasn't the same as persecution because it was acting under a "lawful" mandate from God. Apparently, it isn't persecution if it involves "lawful coercion" by an "infallible" authority like the Catholic church:

"Such intolerance, however, is not the same as persecution, by which we understand the unlawful exercise of coercion. Every corporation lawfully constituted has the right to coerce its subjects within due limits. And though the Church exercises that right for the most part by spiritual sanctions, she has never relinquished the right to use other means." Source: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. [Emphasis added]

The legalistic handwaving on display here is truly mind-boggling, to say the least, but it's typical of the kind of propaganda states have always put out to justify their wars and violent suppression of "heresies" of one kind or another. Apparently, the Catholics regard the use of torture to force confessions, burning witches at the stake and massacring heretics to be coercion "within due limits." With this kind of record, you have to wonder what the church considers to be out of bounds when it comes to the use of force.

If the Vandals were notorious for their violence, it's because they were better at it than other groups. Unfortunately for them, they weren't good enough to consolidate their successes and hold their new African kingdom for very long. The winners write the history, so we remember the Vandals as brutal barbarians. That's the way it goes.